


the patron saint of lost causes

by philthestone



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Pre-show, Sibling banter in 17th centure france ft Aramis's complicated relationship with happiness, the prequel, this is zainab's fault, very brief mentions of athos being a well-meaning raincloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16510019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: He and Marsac, they were like two peas in a pod. Aramis remembers Treville saying this once, and he quite nearly gasps aloud with the memory. He blinks, sharply, and averts his gaze, and as Porthos seems to soften in front of him Aramis has the first thought (of many thoughts in years to come) that Porthos is agoodman.





	the patron saint of lost causes

**Author's Note:**

> have i played fast and loose with 17th century catholicism? no, actually, because as much as i like to laugh about aramis being a terrible catholic on paper, there did actually exist multiple french translations of catholic bibles in the time he was alive, and ARGUABLY the fact that he has a copy he carries around in the show could be legit. he's both resourceful and slightly heretical, isn't he? 
> 
> very slight warning for mild MILD references to suicidal thoughts but nothing serious or acted upon. titles from florence and the machine! also, i love porthos. everyone should love porthos.
> 
> anyway. ive played around with this fic for literally 2 years and im STILL not happy with it but zainab told me she was, so here we are.

“Mind if I join you?”

The rainfall is heavy, as it is usually inclined towards this time of year in Paris. Not quite the end of winter, but not spring yet, either -- as though winter is a spoilt child dragging its fingers behind it impetuously as it stomps from the room, throwing a half-hearted tantrum that leaves the Garrison and its occupants sloshing around in muck.

Aramis looks up from where he is seated on a bench in the corner, having selfishly claimed the driest square of wood he could find. He feels as though he should smile -- that would be the polite thing to do -- or to move and free up space beside him, such that the newcomer can sit in comfort.

He does neither, and is instead almost startled by the sudden question. His face flickers, a swoop of warm, self-directed anger heating his cheeks at this startling, but the awkward expression is swiftly, if ungracefully, shuttered over. 

He sighs. The curve of his head is allowed to drop back against the stone wall, face angled upwards with the faint echo of a lopsided, humourless grin on his lips. It feels tired to his own mouth; he ignores this.

“Are you quite sure you’ve chosen the right company?”

“Please,” huffs Porthos, sitting down beside him despite the lack of true invitation with a solid  _ thump _ . The old wood of the bench rattles a little; Aramis watches as the water clinging to its uncovered end startles onto the wet ground. “Treville assigned me to babysit you, and I ain’t one to shirk my duty.” 

Porthos is the sort of person whose Everything seems solid -- solid and unmoving and warm, almost to the point where it’s irritating. One would think he might waver at moments, or something, and not be so dependably  _ stable _ all the time.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” asks Aramis, a sort of lightness in his voice that even the steady patter of rain can not disguise as genuine. He is -- only those who know him best would avow with great honesty -- usually nothing  _ but _ genuine. Unfortunately, those who know him best are not around at present, nor will be for the foreseeable future, if ever at all. Changeable, perhaps, the station of intimate friends. This is a fact of life that is, for a young man like Aramis (as many other facts of life have been at intervals), draped as a suffocating blanket over his chest. He is for this reason diligently not thinking about it. 

Porthos grunts.

Aramis says, “Not ones to skirt around an issue, are we?”

“You know me,” says Porthos, shrugging. Without another word, he takes his  _ main gauche _ out from his belt and pulls out a dirty rag that looks as though it’s seen better days, bracing the dagger against his knee and setting to work.

“Right,” says Aramis, his half-smile fading into a half-frown. He seems to be doing everything in halves, these days, and it is a mark of how tired he is that this has not become something that threatens to overwhelm him with distaste. Or perhaps, he is already so overwhelmed with distaste that this one, final thing leaves no lasting impression.

“ _ Petit _ was askin’ after you the other day,” says Porthos now, pausing in his ministrations to squint down at the weapon in his hands. He narrows one eye, deftly, and a corner of his mouth tugs with disapproval at the wayward knife. Then he grins, as though nothing is amiss, and sets back to work.

Aramis is scowling now, any attempt at lightness gone.

“Am I to be nannied by the whole garrison, then?” He grimaces belatedly at the uncharitable snap in his voice, but does not make to apologize. This is in itself, he knows, out of character, but he has already returned to dully contemplating the rain drip sadly down the awning, and watching Porthos’s rigorous knife-cleaning out of the corner of his eye.

Porthos appears unphased, flipping the pitiful rag in his hand over to find a clean corner of it. Satisfied, he applies himself once more, offering his reluctant companion a half of a shrug. Unlike Aramis, Porthos has no awful, earth-shattering reason for doing things in halves, and is only being wise in offering casual amiability in the face of emotional ruin.

“I found a long while ago that when someone’s tryin’ to show you they care, you take it as a blessin’ and move on.”

Aramis swallows, jaw working like there’s something painful stuck in his throat.

“This is different,” he says, every line of his face screaming that he hates the sudden hoarseness of his own voice.

“‘Course it is,” says Porthos, very gently. He continues to work on his dagger, and then, presently: “Anyway, he even had inflection in his voice and everything. Once I set  _ you  _ to rights, get Treville off my back, I think I’m gonna buy him a drink. Have a bit of fun, eh?”

“What,” says Aramis, offering a strangled laugh that comes out a bit desperate around the still-present fist in his throat, not commenting on his great doubts regarding ever being truly  _ set to rights _ again. “The great  _ Petit Capitaine _ actually emoted?”

Porthos huffs. “Athos’s alright. Jean-Pierre reckons he’s got some great mysterious tragedy in his past, ‘s why he’s always looking like it’s raining.”

“It  _ is _ raining,” Aramis points out. “And don’t we all?”

“Have tragic mysterious pasts?” Porthos grins at his  _ main gauche _ , teeth a strip of bright white against his dark skin. “Nah, Serge grew up in a shack down the street, family used to sell grain. Says his mum only passed a couple years back, and look at how ancient the old man himself is, eh?”

Aramis nods, and swallows once more, turning his face abruptly to look across the courtyard. Porthos is right -- they do not all come from ruin or scandal or tragedy, though some inevitably end up there. Marsac’s mother was a seamstress.

Now he’s gone.

Aramis turns back to the book in his hands, fingers rubbing against the corner of the page, catching against the damp that seems to have pervaded everything around it. 

The words stare up at him, mocking. It has been such a long while since he opened it.

(He wonders, once a day, if God has forsaken him now, and if it is his own fault, and if --)

“I’ve never seen you with that before,” says Porthos, conversational, still working at the dagger. He, too, now, has a manufactured lightness to his tone, but perhaps with everything that has happened, Porthos has more emotional fortitude to make it passably real. Or even perhaps, more practice. 

Aramis does not consider himself a worthy friend, nor worthy anything, just then -- but he has that thought, nonetheless. 

He swallows, and lets his fingers still against the little Bible’s spine. 

“I -- don’t take it out very often anymore.”

“You used to?”

“Yes, I’ve read it many times, it’s --” He huffs out an emotionless laugh. “Well it’s the Bible, isn’t it?”

Porthos’s hand stills and he finally looks up, catching Aramis’s eye and raising an eyebrow. 

“Oh eh? Never read it meself. Heard it was good, though.”

The rain continues, now sloshing more than pattering. Aramis allows himself a moment to simply regard Porthos’s blithe expression without impression, before rolling his eyes and resting his head back up against the wall. His shoulders have loosened, but he doesn’t think much of it. 

“You can never read it too many times, my friend, though I suppose you’ve not read it at all.”

“Hm,” says Porthos, and goes back to his dagger. 

It takes Aramis a moment, where perhaps two months previous it might have taken him half of one -- a half, in such a situation, would have been praiseworthy -- but the small flicker that crosses Porthos’s face is clear as it could ever be in the shade of the grey courtyard ceiling.

Aramis sits up, just a little bit.

Porthos continues to rub at his knife, the movements somewhat more deliberate than they were a moment before.

“Oh,” says Aramis. 

“ _ Oh  _ what,” says Porthos, the lightness gone now, apparently only having the emotional fortitude for one run of play pretend. Aramis -- who does not think himself a worthy anything just then, yes, but cannot help but  display of the sort of young man he really is out of sheer sincerity -- shifts entirely in his demeanour. There a softness in his face that suggests he doesn’t arrive at it deliberately, but rather instinctively. Whether this instinct can be attributed to his father or mother or God’s own hand, it is left up to debate. 

The rain continues to slosh. 

Porthos rubs at his  _ main gauche _ , solidity more granite than its usual earthy. 

“Well,” says Aramis finally, lifting one hand from his book and tugging impulsively at the recently shorn ends of his curls, foreign in their tickling of his neck. He keeps forgetting, that it’s not long anymore. He pushes the awkward fumble of his fingers to the side, and keeps looking to Porthos determinedly. “If Captain’s assigned you to make sure I don’t do anything so sinful as off myself, you’ll have to sit here beside me and make sure I’m reading all the words right.”

Porthos stops, and finally places the dagger back in its sheath; apparently, he has given up on his rag, too, for it falls to the muddy ground with a small flick of the wrist.

His eyes are narrowed, careful.

“Listen,” he starts, hand twitching, giving Aramis the impression that he has briefly considered holding up a finger but thought better of it. “I taught myself most things, you know? It’s not for -- I just -- never had the time.”

Aramis’s fingers finally twist properly in an errant lock of hair, but other than that, nothing betrays any anxiety that he might have caused offense. 

“The finer points,” continues Porthos, with more of an edge than a man with nothing to prove would carry. “You can’t just drop everythin’ and --  _ what _ ?”

And the fact of the matter is that Aramis has done nothing at all -- not smiled in a manner so typical of those offering pity, nor sighed with condescension like someone might when they know they are more educated than you. Aramis -- the stupid, miserable, heartbroken idiot (all adjectives that Porthos tells Aramis later he had applied to him then, quite liberally, in the privacy of his own thoughts) that was only a week and a half ago found half-dead in the snow and entrusted to Porthos’s care by a Treville whom he’d never seen so shaken -- 

Aramis thinks sometimes that his father was always worried his childhood might have ruined him for better things. Perhaps this is true, he thinks -- more often than not with a bitter taste on his tongue -- but one thing he is realizing has stubbornly remained with him from his days of being held in the old, perfumed room on his mother’s knee was when to be gentle with people, and when to be forceful, and when to not say anything at all.

The memory does not come at once, but little by little, and it’s the sort that along with everything else abruptly makes Aramis feel that he might cry, if he let himself. 

He very much doesn’t want to, so he presses his lips together and continues holding Porthos’s gaze, questioning.

Porthos is glaring; Aramis feels his eyebrows crease of their own accord, an uncharacteristic move that can once more be forgiven, considering the circumstances.

“What? I apologize, did I --”

“No, you stupid blighter, you didn’t do anything,” grumbles Porthos. 

They have not, Aramis realizes, in the past few years, ever sat down and had a proper conversation together -- like this. So, for example, Porthos would not know about Aramis that he carries his little book around, even when he does not read it, in the front of his coat. And Aramis would not know things about Porthos, as has been established. They have never properly sat down like this, because when one has intimate friends, searching for more becomes an arduous task that can easily be put off. 

He and Marsac, they were like two peas in a pod. Aramis remembers Treville saying this once, and he quite nearly gasps aloud with the memory. He blinks, sharply, and averts his gaze, and as Porthos seems to soften in front of him Aramis has the first thought (of many thoughts in years to come) that Porthos is a  _ good _ man. 

Aramis’s hands have tightened around his Bible of their own accord.

Porthos glances down, eyes catching on pages that are worn in such a way that suggests the owner treasures his possession but uses it well; spine that is stiff in a way that makes it obvious it really  _ hasn’t  _ been opened in a long time. He heaves a great big sigh ( _ solid _ , Aramis thinks,  _ dependable _ ), and then rises to his feet, only to shift over two steps on the bench and drop back down with another solid  _ thump _ .

“This is cozy,” remarks Aramis, the faux lightness returning.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Porthos, dropping an arm down around the other’s shoulders such that he starts, very slightly, the breath knocking out from his chest in a small  _ puff _ . “Alright, show me then.”

(Aramis wonders, once a day, if God has forsaken him because he has forgotten God -- but then, there are times when the heavens conspire and shift and leave people in your path that only God in His wisdom knows your need for.)

“From the start, or …?”

Porthos rolls his eyes. “Just the bits that’ll ensure you don’t off yourself, eh?”

Aramis huffs, elbowing Porthos gently and adjusting the book on his lap. “That would be the Church, my friend.”

“Huh,” says Porthos. “Well, they’d have got to have gotten it from somewhere, yeah?”

“Don’t worry,” says Aramis in a serious tone, the joke slipping out before he has time to be acerbic about it. “If you’re listening to Captain Treville, you would think I’m rather too vain to consider doing anything so wasteful as taking my own life.”

Porthos’s face breaks out into another of his wide grins.

“That’s the spirit, mate.”

Aramis sighs, and eases his shoulders against Porthos’s arm, and rifles through the pages before settling on one he seems to find acceptable.

“Right. In the beginning -- ah, words, I’ll show you each word -- you’ve got the letters all right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got the ruddy letters.”

“Excellent, my friend, you’ll be ahead of me by mid-afternoon, I’m sure. Now, start there, see, where the  _ I _ begins.”

Porthos’s arm is warm against the damp rain, and Aramis, shorn curls hanging thickly over his eyebrows, forgets to force the lightness into his voice for the rest of the afternoon.

 

**Author's Note:**

> sidenote for those interested in my intellectual adoration of the theological side of aramis's character but DID you know that in my "did catholic french bibles exist" research rabbit hole (yes i know my history is terrible) i discovered that aramis and blaise pascal technically would have overlapped in their timelines and as such i'm fascinated by the concept of aramis reading pascal. 
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoyed!


End file.
